How Recruiters Are Using GenAI to Enhance Interview Prep

Generative AI (GenAI) is transforming how recruiters prepare interview questions, making the process faster, easier, and more effective. Recruiters can harness the power of AI to design interview questions that are thoughtful, inclusive, and aligned with both the role and the candidate — ultimately leading to more meaningful conversations and better hiring decisions. 

Getting Started

Before interviews are even set up, recruiters are using GenAI tools to review resumes and applications, matching them to job descriptions and candidate profiles. 

“When I’m launching a new search, my first priority is gathering the essentials from the hiring manager — must-haves, nice-to-haves, and deal-breakers,” said Jen Jones, a senior talent partner at Cedar, a health care financial solutions platform in New York City. “Beyond that, I ask: What makes a candidate great versus good versus a pass? Bonus points if the hiring manager already has their interview plan, question set, and rubrics ready, but at times, we collaborate to build those together.”

Toolkit: Job Interview Questions  

Kristin Hughes, director of recruiting at Odyssey Information Services, a technology consulting and staffing firm in Plano, Texas, helped create an AI recruiting assistant GPT trained on recruiting books and a list of prompts and instructions to evaluate and interview candidates.   

Hughes explained that her team uploads a job description and a profile of a recent hire in the same role into the GPT and asks it to compare the candidate to the job description and the recent hire.  

She asks it to: Provide a side-by-side comparison chart of their skills against the job description. Provide a brief analysis of how they compare to the previously successful candidate, as well as a fact-based pitch we can use in submission.  

“We can simply use the custom tool we built each time without having to enter the prompts repeatedly,” Hughes said. “The amount of time saved has been mind-blowing.”   

Pete Radloff, senior leadership recruiter at Datadog, a monitoring platform for cloud applications in New York City, uses GenAI to assess candidate profiles against particular jobs as well. “Leveraging the agent allows for me to have profiles assessed in a similar way and removes potential blind spots I might otherwise miss,” he said. “I’ve set up an agent to assess the candidate’s background to ideate questions for areas I may want to dive deeper into and gather more signals or information about.”  

Jones said she creates custom recruiter screening questions and rubrics that include a numerical scoring system. “Using AI to generate screening questions helps shorten the initial candidate calibration phase, and my hiring partners actually read and use the scorecards,” she said. “Instead of duplicating questions, they go deeper based on the insights I’ve gathered, building trust and elevating the process.” 

Using the Job Description

One way to create relevant interview questions with GenAI is to start with the job description. Recruiters can copy and paste the job description into their GPT and ask AI to generate interview questions tailored to the role.  

Radloff said he trains the AI to use the job description and some of the role intake notes “so that there’s a full picture of the need, and what to be assessing in a candidate’s background during the interview.”  

Jones said her process “absolutely starts with the job description. I’ll ask the LLM [large language model] if the language is gender-neutral, and if not, I’ll prompt it to make recommendations with a goal of making it appeal to a wide variety of viewers. I’ll then input the job description, including skills and responsibilities, and overlay it with our company’s core values. From there, I generate interview questions, outreach messaging, and rubrics.”  

For example, she may prompt one of her custom agents with: I am a technical recruiter working on a Director, Product Management role. I need candidate interview questions (Recruiter video screen), a rubric, and a scoring scale from 1-2 (low), 3-4 (mid), 5 (high).

Here’s another example of a prompt using the job description: Based on the responsibilities and qualifications of this job description, generate 10 first-round interview questions that assess the candidate’s relevant experience, problem-solving skills, and cultural fit.

And another: Based on the job description, generate five interview questions that specifically assess the key hard and soft skills required for this role. Ensure the questions encourage candidates to provide detailed, real-world examples of their experience.  

When it comes to writing prompts, Radloff said he avoids yes/no questions, “so that I can get examples and depth in the answer. This also allows me to dig deeper into follow-up questions.” 

Hughes said it’s more effective to just start using AI and experimenting, instead of trying to come up with template prompts. “It’s more about understanding the concept,” she said. “You don’t have to engineer prompts — you have to communicate with the GenAI directly and effectively, which should be a recruiter’s top skill set.” 

Refining Interview Questions 

GenAI tools can also be used to clarify questions, enhance them with follow-up queries, and improve an existing set of standard interview questions.  

“I’m constantly experimenting,” Jones said. “I’m all the time fine-tuning baseline questions to focus on specific skills or competencies. Ever had a hiring manager rattle off half-formed thoughts and you’re left to decode them? AI helps translate that into structured, meaningful questions.” 

She asks AI to tweak questions based on whether the role is more technical, more product-focused, or a blend. 

Hughes also continuously refines the questions produced by AI. “With GenAI, the more specific and detailed you are, the better the outcome,” she said. “One of the best analogies I’ve heard, and that made it click for me, compares prompts to an old writing exercise on instructions for how to make a banana sundae. The point was to show that without clear, detailed steps, the results vary wildly. The same applies to AI — precision is everything.” 

Radloff uses multiple agents to provide different options for questions, based on the level and complexity of the role. “Some areas to drill down into will have more or less importance based on the level of the role,” he said. “For example, a front-line engineering manager may lean more into tactical engineering leadership and less on high-level strategy. A director role may focus more on partnering with product for road mapping, go-to-market strategy and revenue growth. Having a variety of agents set up for different levels and roles allows for me to be specific about what we want to surface in the interview.”   

Before using AI-generated interview questions in an interview, recruiters should review them closely to ensure they are legally compliant and aligned with the role and the company’s hiring goals. AI can also be used to audit the questions for potential bias or exclusionary language as a proactive step toward building a more consistent and inclusive interview process.

Toolkit: Opening and Closing Questions  

The Human Conductor 

Recruiters are starting to use AI as a strategic assistant, saving time, reducing bias, and ensuring consistency.

“AI gives you wings,” Jones said. “From my agency days, I learned that time is our most valuable resource. AI lets me automate the heavy lifting — drafting, formatting, structuring — so I can focus on higher-value work like defining goals, setting tone, aligning values, and helping candidates feel seen and respected.”

Hughes thinks of AI as a sidekick that helps “push productivity, spark ideas, assist in speeding up tasks that require a lot of time and focus. If AI is the orchestra, the human is the conductor. The potential is truly limitless for how we use it.”